Karl Reis: "Agrarian Question and Agrarian Movement in Silesia in 1848." Breslau 1910 [Vol. XII. "Accounts and Sources on Silesian History".]

(A work of a narrow, stupid reactionary jurist).

**1—2:** Revolution and peasants. Poznań (peace). Silesia (agrarian revolts): two extremes (these provinces).

**(3)** From March to December 1848 Prussia lived under the impression of the "revolutionary fire" in Silesia.

**4.** Bismarck wanted to go with the peasants against the mutinous Berlin. The peasants in Pomerania and Brandenburg were loyal.

**9.** Peasants-artisans in Silesia.

**p. 3.** Peasants and revolution in Prussia (NB) cf. p. 23: peasants quiet, with the exception of Silesia.

Peasants and agricultural workers. The participation of agricultural workers in the movement was very weak.

Peasants in Prussia remained completely indifferent to the entire revolutionary movement as it unfolded before them (13).

**18:** Russian picture (from above): castles of landowners and pitiful misery of peasants!

**21.** Famine of 1847.

**25.** "Disturbances" in March 1848. [Destruction very and very rare.] **Demand for abolition of feudal obligations.**

Peasants appeared in crowds and demanded written declarations of their refusal to acknowledge feudal obligations and payments. Military force (only threats)...

**26:** The main participants in peasant unrest were not the poor, but the well-to-do.

**27.** A minority participated in the "disorders" (even in Silesia).

**28.** Suspension on May 20, 1848 of proceedings concerning "Laudemium"* etc.

**28—29.** Political life among peasants was "not strictly political" (i.e., more focused on land demands). (Bismarck wrote in 1848 that urban agitators tried to incite peasants against landowners).

**33.** Universal suffrage.

**35.** Peasant assemblies. Demands: abolition of obligations, "better representation." And that's all!!

**37.** Efforts of "democrats" to elect non-landowners.

**38—39.** Peasants elected peasants and ... democrats.

**42.** — One thousand petitions from peasants [about what? Revision of redemption (NB p. 43 at the end) and return of servitudes (52).]

**43.** Projects of democrats: abolition of hunting rights and feudal taxes!!

**45.** — the left for gratuitous elimination of feudal obligations.

**45.** — and the right for abolition (with silence on its gratuitous character).

**47.** Landowners for "agreement with peasants" "against the heavy fist of the proletariat"... Landowners propose partial abolition of feudal obligations.

**49.** — at the end — were unwilling to repeat August 4 (1789)...

**47—48 and 50:** projects of a union of landowners. (p. 58 Bismarck). p. 59.

**51.** In Silesia peasant unrest made landowners more compliant!! | p. 63 |

**52.** Government for redemption, against abolition.

**54—5.** Peasants against redemption ("radicalism").

**59.** Enemy of the Junkers Hansemann (Minister of Finance).

**60.** Junkers against "the parliament of day-laborers" (p. 60 at the end).

**64.** In September (1848) new "disorders" (Tumulte).

**64—5** (weak disturbances)

**65.** Rustical Union: founded August 27, 1848. About 400 representatives from 48 districts | p. 66 |. Demand for abolition (and immediate cessation) of feudal obligations. At first there was no direct alliance with democrats. September 22—23 in Breslau, the 2nd congress of the Rustical Union. Representatives from 35 districts.

**From the literature:** Dessmann: "History of Silesian Agrarian Constitution." Strasbourg 1904.

F. Salomon: "German Party Programs." Issue 1.

Dyrhenfarth: "A Silesian Village and Manor Estate."

Schmoller's Research. Vol. XXV, No. 2.

Emil Knorr: "Polish Uprisings since 1830." Berlin 1880.

**68.** Elections in Silesia: 37 left (of which 20 "determined": Elsner and Co.), 20 "inclined" toward the left; 44 right (including 6 extremists) and 3 wild.

**70.** Government against unlawful appeals of peasant unions: to struggle with violators of landowners' rights even by force. [Instruction to troops on the use of weapons.] | September 1848 |

**74.** — agricultural workers in the Prussian province "played in the revolution the same role as peasants in Silesia."

**78.** Landowners succeeded in obtaining from the king the removal of Hansemann and the elimination of his agrarian laws (summer 1848).

**80.** Preparation of troops in Silesia, military measures in response to intensified agitation of the Rustical Union.

**84.** Government on the "incitement" of peasants: declaration against the harm to landowners by the deprivation of their rights, against "anarchic and democratic aspirations."

**NB**

**86.** Defeat of Elsner | p. 88 Cadet or Labor deputy? ? | (and other leftists), his proposal for gratuitous abolition of feudal obligations [191 votes against 107]

**88.** Support of deputy Schmidt (without redemption) (L. E. Schmidt).

**98.** The King did not confirm the law on gratuitous abolition of hunting rights!

**100:** The King finally signed on October 31, 1848

**102.** Peasants do not pay feudal obligations (at Michaelmas) — minor disorders, call for troops. (103).

**103—104:** Compromise, favorable to landowners, government bill.

**105—122:** Stupid juridical disputes in the chamber over the significance of feudal rights. Abolition of tithes did not pass (122).

**122—3:** Inquiry about strengthening troops in Silesia. Answer: "Insecurity" (in the countryside).

**126.** Rustical Union (partly) for refusal to pay church tithes. The National Assembly was dissolved without managing to pass a law. Peasant deputies from Silesia did not dare to go against the king out of "loyalty"//

**128.** ... In general, in Prussia, Pomerania, Brandenburg — peasants sided with the king.

— in Silesia for the National Assembly. Assembly on November 12, 1848 in Glogau — address to the king, threat of armed uprising (129), resolution "not to touch private rights, especially of land ownership" (p. 128 at the end)

**130.** — but the dispersal of the National Assembly did not greatly disturb the peasants (not as the democrats expected).

— in December 1848 disorders again in Silesia. Attack on an estate: troops were repelled (peasants), the landowner fired. Troops made arrests.

**132.** December 10, 1848, martial law declared. "Forest thefts and field damage were on the agenda," some bloody clashes with landowners' servants and soldiers. There were "harmful influences of the Rustical Unions"...

**433—5:** Law (of the reactionary government) December 20, 1848. Regulation entrusted to mixed arbitration commissions — 2 from peasants, 2 from landowners, 1 from government. Redemption of obligations...

At this time the 3rd congress of the Rustical Unions assembled in Breslau, but their role had already ended by 1848, these "highly distinctive creations of the preceding revolutionary period"... 135...

"The unlawful, revolutionary activity of the principal Rustical Union was, however, in any case ended. Its effectiveness had consisted in keeping awake the peasants stirred up by the revolutionary storms, in uniting them and thereby giving them the strength to champion their demands jointly against the estate owners, but also before Parliament." (136).

They even reprinted from the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung* "The Silesian Billion" by W. Wolff, "the sharpest literary indictment against large landholding" (137).

**138.** It began, they say (looking back), with a petition to landowners — then crowds gathered (with participation of wealthy peasants too). This was exploited by democrats. The Rustical Unions helped this connection of peasants with democrats. Disorders in Polish Silesia ("drunk" they were — remarks the scoundrel author).

**139.** Constitution of December 5, 1848 and agrarian law of December 20, 1848 were for the state and for the peasants the end of the revolution.

**139—140.** "In the overall course of the Prussian Revolution, Silesian peasantry presents the interesting spectacle that in the historically conditioned counter-thrust of the 'urbanized' West against the agrarian East, it did not, like the peasants of the other provinces east of the Elbe, take up the position of rejecting passivity, but immediately threw itself into the rushing current. And if W. H. Riehl coined the phrase: 'The Mark and Pomeranian peasants formed the moral operational basis in the struggles against the revolution,' — he could have with far greater justification added Poznań — then Silesia's rural population offered a favorable operational basis *for* the revolution" (140).

(End of book).

The work is weak. Reactionary jurist. Neither economics nor history of the revolution.

**Conclusion:** The movement of peasants, agrarian, was very weak and partial in 1848 in Prussia, far weaker, incomparably weaker than in Russia in 1905. Not a trace of demand for expropriation of landowners' land.

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**Literature:**

Many specialized works on the history of Silesia, especially on the agrarian question (pamphlets etc.) in 1848.

Oppenheim: "Waldeck, Leader of Prussian Democracy." Berlin 1873.

Hans Mähl: "The Transition of Prussia into the Constitutional System through the Second United Landtag." Berlin 1909.

Alexander Lewy: "On the Genesis of Present-Day Agrarian Ideas in Prussia." Stuttgart 1898. (Munich Political-Economic Studies, No. 27)

**Supplement on the Rustical Unions:**

**69:** "If the 1st chairman of the principal Rustical Union, Schlinke, at the II. democratic congress stated the number of affiliated unions at 200 and their membership at 200,000, this was of course exaggerated."

**Demand of the 2nd congress (September 23, 1848):** to cease at once feudal payments until the issuance of a new agrarian law. They anticipated refusal to pay taxes. (69). Gratuitous abolition of feudal obligations.

**69:** "But not in all newly formed Rustical Unions were people willing to follow entirely the extreme proposals and demands." For example, the Rustical Union founded September 7, 1848 in the district of Namslau refused to immediately stop payment of feudal obligations (70).

**70:** Regarding September 1848: "In the countryside it was not only the grosser excesses that caused concern, but even more the general uncertainty: poaching, arson." And, of course, only to Brandenburg's energy must one attribute [the fact] that "not too many demonstrations against the domains took place" (71).

In Silesia "the actual question of agricultural laborers was displaced by the peasant question" (74).

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* Feudal law granting the feudal lord a certain portion of the property of a serf upon the transfer of that property to other hands. Ed.